A Rushed Introduction
by paperclaire
Summary: Nicholas Cutler wakes up on the floor of a police cell, and tries to put his world back together with the "help" of one Mr York.


**Disclaimer:** Alas, none of these characters are mine. Just trying to pass the time until season 5.

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A bright light filled Nicholas Cutler's vision. It almost made sense at last. Then his eyes swam into focus and he saw it was a bare light bulb hanging from the cell's ceiling, high above him. He sat up with a short wordless shout of shock and fear.

Sitting above him on the bare slab of a bed was Mr York, legs folded neatly, expensive suit ever so slightly crumpled as if he'd been wearing it for a while. "Ah, commendable timing, Mr Cutler", he said in that clipped voice, tucking a slim book away into his jacket, "we shouldn't have to wait too long for Roy to come along and send us on our way." He glanced at his watch.

Nick sat for a second, trying to gather his thoughts... He wanted to lie back down on the cool, concrete floor again. The memory of a bad dream scratched at the back of his head, blocking out everything else. Why was he on the floor? Who was this man? How long had he been here? He managed to grasp the dream he'd woken from. A dark corridor, figures waiting for him. "Men. There were men. Sticks. Rope." A horrible dream. They beat the sticks against the walls, stretched the rope between gnarled, long fingers. It was too vivid. It was all he could remember.

"Oh, I wouldn't concern yourself with them," Mr York said with a smirk. "I've put you well outside their jurisdiction."

Nick wasn't really listening to the other man, his head was still full of the corridor that gaped and warped in front of him. But the man's voice was a voice of calm and assured authority. Over the course of his law degree and training, he had grown very used to following orders given in that kind of accent, albeit usually ones coming from a white-haired professor or port-swilling senior partner. It helped him push those leering, yelping figures from his mind. Which left it almost blank but for a lingering unease he couldn't place.

A name drifted into his head from last night. Ah yes. The gambler. Probably the wayward son of some toff or another. "Mr York?" he said,"I'm sorry, I'm not sure what happened to me there."

"It will come back to you."

Nick reached up to his collar to fasten his perpetually loose tie. He was with a client, after all, and given his current position on the floor, he expected he did not look like the respectable legal representative he was supposed to be. Getting the tie right would make a good start to rebuilding that image. Then he would consider standing up.

His collar was soaked and sticky. He pulled his hand away in surprise. It was stained dark red. He wiped it convulsively on his shirt, before noticing that it was stuck to him and stiff with congealing blood.

God, was he hurt? Had he hit his head as he fell to the ground? Why hadn't this man helped him? But he felt fine, really, other than a headache that felt like he'd dozed off in a hot room. He ran his hands over his head, and found no wound to account for it all.

"My apologies for the mess. You put up a better fight than I was expecting, I must admit. More damage done than strictly necessary. Still, it seems to have cleared itself up well enough."

Nick looked at him blankly. Mr York still had that smirk on his face, the same one he'd been wearing since Nick had first stepped into the cell. It was an unpleasant expression, so Nick looked away and concentrated on pushing himself onto his feet. He managed it with some effort. His sense of balance seemed to be off.

As he got up, Mr York's smile widened into a wide grin. "Excellent, Mr Cutler, excellent progress." He stood up in one smooth motion and clapped a hand around Nick's shoulder. His fingertips dug in with unexpected force. "I'm so proud of you!" he exclaimed, pitching his voice with a mocking theatricality.

And then the memory hit him. Nick had watched with surprise as the duty officer had shut the cell door at the detainee's bidding. Then for a very few but cruelly long seconds, something tore savagely at his throat until he'd lost consciousness. He hadn't seen Mr York move.

Mr York's grip kept him from falling to the floor again, but he managed to twist away and stagger towards the door. He pounded at it, making the solid wood boom and echo around the small, hard space. "Help! For God's sake, help!"

Mr York threw back his head and laughed. "There it is!"

Nick tried to keep one eye on the door and one on the figure standing across from him. "Open the door! Open the door! Please... Please open the door!"

"Please calm yourself, Mr Cutler," the other man said loudly, enunciating over the hammering noise and seating himself back on the bed, legs once again crossed. He folded his hands carefully in his lap, lacing the fingers together. "Despite their dedication to the upkeep of the law, I can assure you that no officer will be here before nine o'clock this morning, so please spare our ears in the meanwhile."

"Oh Jesus!" Nick began stumbling through a prayer, pressing his back to the door. His weakly-remembered words were faltering, drying up in his throat. He fell silent with a whimper, backing himself into the corner as far as he could get from the other man, who was watching him impassively.

Mr York sighed. "I suppose I should explain myself. The normal protocol is making a prior offer of course, but Mr Mercer's... indiscretion has rather forced my hand. I've had to hurry you through somewhat."

"W-What? Hurry what?"

That smirks again. "Your job application. Come on, the one we were discussing. Congratulations are in order, you were successful."

"That w-wasn't a discussion. I said I didn't want a... What did you do?"

"Mr Cutler, you are in grave danger of boring me, so I shall spare us both." He blinked slowly and deliberately, and his eyes on opening again had been replaced by shiny black orbs that glinted lifelessly, like polished stones, in the light. "There are more things in heaven and earth... and you will know the rest." His sharp teeth flashed at Nick, and in his memory he felt them ripping tendons loose from his neck again.

He clapped a hand to his neck above the soaked collar. The skin was smooth and whole. Except for two small bumps about an inch or two apart. They could have been a couple of nasty insect bites.

"As I was saying, it all came off rather well in the end." Mr York planted his feet on the ground as if he was going to stand again.

"Stay over there! Don't come any closer!" The words escaped Nick's throat as a shrill shriek.

Mr York raised his hands in a gesture of amused compliance and sat down again. "If that's what you would prefer." He reached inside his jacket and threw something small and shiny at Nick. He threw it with deceptive force and Nick had to grab it out of the air before it hit him in the face. It was a lady's compact mirror. "To inspect the damage with." said Mr York. "I took it off someone last evening. I had a notion it would prove useful."

"What?"

"Or you can use it to powder your nose. Your choice, really." Nick scratched at his neck again. He flicked open the mirror and held it up to see those twin marks... Unsuccessful. He angled it again. And again. He held it up to his face. To his eye. The cell doors closed hatch, behind his head, stared blankly back at him from the little round surface in his hand. "A crude but undeniably fast way of making the point. I trust you have put the pieces together for yourself."

"What have you done to me?"

"Done to you? Actually, I've not done very much at all. A few slight changes. A couple I have already demonstrated and I do not care to repeat the performance..." Mr York grinned quickly. "Immortality, obviously, but only if your current fortune holds. You will find yourself to be a little stronger, but nothing ridiculous mind you - anyone can be lucky, especially if they have a stake to hand and they catch you unawares."

Nick's knees were buckling and he was collapsing against the door. Mr York ignored him. "Stay away from crucifixes and their ilk for a good couple of centuries. Do not arrive uninvited for a few more after that. Do not draw too much attention to yourself. That is all you need for the first lesson.

"This... This is madness." Nick sat hunched against the wall, hugging his knees to him. "It's not true. It's not possible."

"Do check the mirror again if you'd like further confirmation. Though I can assure you I'm man of my word."

Dumbly, Nick peered into the small mirror again. He was greeted with the brickwork behind him. He smashed the mirror into the floor and put his head in his hands.

Mr York stood again, definitively. "Right then, now that's settled in, we need to be thinking of tidying up after our stay."

He cast his eyes over the cell. Nick watched him from the floor, suddenly too exhausted to be scared of the monster standing over him. There was now a smile of satisfaction on that pale, sharp face. There was very little to indicate what had happened. Only a small pool of blood where Nick had been lying, but Nick knew the cell saw worse most paydays. His shirt seemed to be the evening's only casualty.

From outside, there came the noise of the police station's heavy door being unlocked. Footsteps, tapping out that distinctive, slow beat of the policeman's gait.

Mr York looked briefly at the cell door, and then crouched down in front of Nick. He spoke quickly, quietly, and with an absolute coldness. "In approximately one minute, we are going to walk out of this cell, out of this building and into the car waiting for us. You will not talk to anybody until the car door is shut. Do you understand?"

Nick nodded once. "Wonderful!" said Mr York. His voice regained the animation it had previously had, but now nothing could dispel the underlying chill to every word that Nick heard. "I was absolutely serious when I said you were destined for great things, Mr Cutler." He had stood up again and turned away to the bed, where he picked something up. "You will look back on this day as your... liberation." he turned back to Nick. "Get up." he ordered.

Nick got to his feet. He saw that Mr York had his jacket draped over one arm. He didn't remember him taking it off. Mr York smiled collegiately at him, and rested his hands on Nick's shoulders, before sliding them down to straighten the scarlet-stained collar and re-fasten the loose tie. "There, well, it's the best we're going to do for now," he said standing back and looking at Nick appraisingly. "Although put this on," he said, holding out the jacket for him like an attentive valet, "it will go some way to hiding the mess. We have a... an understanding with the constabulary here, but it's always best not to frighten the horses."

Nick slipped the jacket on and did up the buttons over the filthy shirt. Mr York handed him the stack of papers he'd walked in with. Where he touched them, he left red smears of his own blood, but he found himself shuffling them into a neat pile. Outside the cell door, the footsteps were getting nearer, then the sound of a key being selected from a large bunch and being turned in a heavy lock. The door swung open. The duty officer who had shut them in stood by the doorway. He looked fixedly into the middle distance down the corridor he'd just come from. He did not look at Mr York or Nick, standing just behind him.

"Roy, good morning!" announced Mr York. Roy glanced quickly at the man's feet. He seemed unwilling or unable to look him in the face.

"Good morning, sir. Nine o'clock, sir."

"Indeed it is, precisely so. The sun rises on a new day, and my good counsel and I feel as refreshed as if we had drunk from the very Lethe itself after a night in your fine establishment."

"Glad to hear it, sir. Can I get anything for you, sirs?" Nick noticed with a numb surprise that the man was avoiding looking at him too, the same fear extended to him. He saw the man's eyes reach for his then drop to the floor and out of the room again. Something else as well - Jesus, it was the man's heartbeat, thudding at an increasing pace. Loud enough to fill the room...

The man took a small, involuntary step back further out into the corridor. Mr York was watching the man carefully. "No, no, we best are going now..." he said distractedly. He turned to look at Nick, registering the black eyes that had alarmed Roy. He slapped Nick's face round the jaw, managing somehow to make the gesture appear to be jovial but landing a stunning force that almost made Nick stagger. It did make him blink, which returned his eyes to a more human shade.

"Come now, Mr Cutler. I'm anxious to breathe the free air again." Mr York announced, turning away from Nick and striding past Roy into the corridor. As Mr York passed him, Nick saw Roy flinch and gulp nervously, the Adam's apple bobbing in his throat... The pulsing noise seemed to double in volume...

"Mr Cutler!" shouted Mr York from some distance. Nick realised he was staring at Roy's neck. He shook his head, and hurried out the door to follow his... his new employer. Roy did not hesitate to take several steps back as he passed. Twelve yards away down the corridor, just as he was about to turn the corner and disappear from his sight, Nick heard the man exhale in relief.

Mr York was waiting for him just outside the police station, lighting a cigarette from a match, which he dropped to the floor. "Damn Fergus. Where's the bloody car?" he muttered with mild irritation. Nick, sticking to his instructions, said nothing. After the night in the cells, the daylight felt like a punch. His eyes in particular he couldn't raise above the rooftops, and wherever the light touched his skin, it prickled as if doused with bleach.

Mr York briefly flicked his eyes sideways to register his discomfort, and then glanced at the bright blue sky, no concern evident. "You'll get used to it," he stated, "you can get used to anything."

An expensive, pale blue car pulled round the corner a little faster than was proper and came to a slightly abrupt stop at the bottom of the police station's steps. The suspension lurched a little in reaction. Mr York visibly winced, his eyes closing and his jaw setting for a moment, but he seemed to regain his composure the next moment and walked down towards the car. Nick followed him wordlessly without hesitation.

At their approach, the passenger door swung open. "My Lord Hal!" shouted the unseen driver, "Successful night, was it?"

"A minor loss on the dog fight, but I have engaged the services of the first rate legal mind of Mr Cutler here. You're late, Fergus. Our new friend is understandably feeling a little delicate this morning. Common courtesy dictates that we shouldn't leave him to the harsh embrace of the sun on his first day."

Eyes slowly adjusting to the awful light, Nick managed to see Fergus, leaning across the passenger seat looking back at him, with a wide grin on his face. "Sorry about that," said Fergus, "I made a quick stop to pick up a bite for later." The grin widened, and he turned his eyes to the man he called Lord Hal. "I think you'll approve once you see."

Mr York sighed. "I could do with a drink after last night. Very well, it will go some way to make amends. I will drive."

"Of course." said Fergus immediately. There was no fear in his voice, but Nick could see, even in those first few, bewildering hours, the practiced, automatic deference extended to Mr York by everyone he dealt with. Fergus got out the car, held the door open for Mr York, then walked round to the passenger side, throwing open the rear door before jumping in beside his boss.

"Get in, then!" he shouted to Nick. Nick found himself complying, ducking into the mercifully shady interior and pulling the door shut after him.

Mr York carefully put the car into gear and pulled smoothly away into the road. "Well then, Mr Cutler. You followed your instructions to the letter. I think we can permit a few more questions, should you have any about your new position."

Nick opened his mouth to speak, but found not a single word to say. From behind him, in the boot of the car, he heard muffled cries and the sound of a body struggling against binding ropes.

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**Author's note:** Thanks for reading. Reviews, nitpicking, cups of tea, etc all very gratefully received. I have one more chapter in mind for this but I think it works as a one shot for the meanwhile.


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